Your thoughts on GW2 putting full focus to open world as most played content

[The Ace.9105]

What are your thoughts on Anet putting their full focus on open world and stopping developing raids etc. for open world events cause open world is the most played content?

 

You think they are on the right track or if they are disconnected from the community and looking only statistics?

 

Personally I think that focusing on open world content cause it's the most played content in the game is just statistic value of players who have nothing better to do in the game. They have done their daily fractals and weekly raids and when they want to play the game more the only thing that's left is open world farming that Anet recently nerfed cause it impacts the gemstore.

 

Unless the focusing on open world content brings us some kind of separate 10-man instances where you clear the map and get completion from it like vanquish in gw1 the full on focus is just disconnection from the community.

[mercury ranique.2170]

Wait, what did I miss??

afaik, Arenanet has always put focus on many kinds of content and been catering many types of players. Statistics is a valuable resource to determine how many resources to spend, but never the only one.

 

There are always people who think they are entitled to more focus on their preferred type of gamplay, but to me, the attention given has always been fairly balanced.

[trev.1045]

I would like their focus to be on an expansion first and foremost, as i think it is the best way to guarantee income for them and players

 

I think the open world is the biggest strength of GW2 personally.

[Glider.5792]

> @"mercury ranique.2170" said:

> There are always people who think they are entitled to more focus on their preferred type of gamplay, but to me, the attention given has always been fairly balanced.

 

Balanced ? Its clear Open world PvE is getting most of the attention. Just compare PvE to PvP and WvW.

Edit: If we're speaking on purely PvE perspective (Open world, Raids, fractals), maybe?

[AliamRationem.5172]

> @"trev.1045" said:

> I would like their focus to be on an expansion first and foremost, as i think it is the best way to guarantee income for them and players

>

> I think the open world is the biggest strength of GW2 personally.

 

I agree that GW2 does open world best. However, it isn't enough on its own because eventually you end up just farming content you've already played out to earn gold to buy things that don't matter if all you do is farm. Expansions go a long way toward keeping things fresh and giving players new things to experience.

 

As for the idea of focusing entirely on open world because this is what they do best and it's what the most players participate in? I strongly disagree. I think it misses the point that, while most players participate in open world, they also tend to do other things be it raids/fractals/dungeons, PvP, or WvW. Take that away and the game feels even more like a pointless open world gold farm, especially with no expansion on the horizon! This would be a disaster.

[Tanner Blackfeather.6509]

> @"The Ace.9105" said:

> What are your thoughts on Anet putting their full focus on open world and stopping developing raids etc. for open world events cause open world is the most played content?

>

 

You say this as if there's an official statement from ANet. If there is, a link would be helpful. ;)

[MoriMoriMori.5349]

> @"The Ace.9105" said:

> Personally I think that focusing on open world content cause it's the most played content in the game is just statistic value of players who have nothing better to do in the game.

 

Not at all. I prefer OpenWorld personally because it's the most accessible content, with least possible hassle. You can just go there and start playing solo, if you wish. Then see a player / bunch of people doing something and decide to simply step in and instantly become part of it - or step out, without any hard thoughts. And never, ever somebody will start pm-ing you, scolding about wrong profession, not meta enough build / low dps :D If somebody will get salty and will leave event (me, for example :D), it won't fail just because of 1-2 ppl like that.

 

I also like the exploration aspect and variety which comes with Open World. I like the feel of roaming huge map on foot, sometimes with some weird, "just for fun" build, getting into different adventures - at my own pace, without skipping any fights to get to the boss faster. Something like this isn't possible in elitism-driven realm of raids and high-tier fractals. You'll be kicked and black-listed if you'll insist on playing this way.

 

I also don't play just meta maps, like SW, but can go to any map, including core Tyria, and just join activities there. I don't farm anything, so not interested in speed clearing potential of dungeons/fractals. You would need 10 times more different Fractals and Dungeons to be on par with OpenWorld in terms of variety.

 

That being said, I don't mind more raids and fractals. I sometimes do dungeons and fractals (not raids, though, the environment there is much more unforgiving and won't tolerate non-meta builds and fun-driven approach to the game), yes, but I consider them more like an auxiliary activity, when I need something different, or more challenging. The later is because OpenWorld content is often too easy. What I would really like to see is more OpenWorld maps with interesting challenging combat (i.e. not more HP on punching bag mobs, but more interesting combat mechanics of those mobs which make you to master your profession / build).

[SexyMofo.8923]

> @"mercury ranique.2170" said:

> Arenanet has always put focus on many kinds of content

 

When you put the majority of the staff on side projects, I wouldn’t consider that as always focus on content.

 

 

[Mea.5491]

As an open world player, after the unnecessarily OVERnerfed Istan map, it definitely doesn't feel like Anet has "full focus" on open world, it's more like they are slowly taking away all the fun from us who enjoy farming meta events. When it comes to fun and Gold, the events in PoF and the new Living World maps are underwhelming, we still rely on SW and HoT maps. (Btw, I don't do Raids and Fractals).

 

> @"MoriMoriMori.5349" said:

> Not at all. I prefer OpenWorld personally because it's the most accessible content, with least possible hassle. You can just go there and start playing solo, if you wish. Then see a player / bunch of people doing something and decide to simply step in and instantly become part of it - or step out, without any hard thoughts. And never, ever somebody will start pm-ing you, scolding about wrong profession, not meta enough build / low dps :D

 

^ 100% agree with this. No elitists - the main reason why I enjoy open world. I want my video game to feel like a game, not a job where I have to live up to people's expectations!

[Vayne.8563]

I don't agree with the OP. I don't believe open world content has more people than raids and fractals because they have nothing else to do. Furthermore, I think Anet knows what percentage of the playerbase has ever set foot inside a raid, and how many do them regularly. If I had to guess, 10-15% of the population raid or consider themselves raiders.

 

I think the largest bulk of most MMOs are very casual and don't necessarily care about challenging content. HoT was harder content, but it probably drove more people away from the game than attracted new people.

 

Nope, can't agree with the OP at all. Open world is a niche that makes this game special anyway. Focusing on raids in an attempt to compete against WoW and FF XIV to name but two would be pointless anyway. Anet should stay with that which sets them apart.

[trev.1045]

> @"AliamRationem.5172" said:

> > @"trev.1045" said:

> > I would like their focus to be on an expansion first and foremost, as i think it is the best way to guarantee income for them and players

> >

> > I think the open world is the biggest strength of GW2 personally.

>

> I agree that GW2 does open world best. However, it isn't enough on its own because eventually you end up just farming content you've already played out to earn gold to buy things that don't matter if all you do is farm. Expansions go a long way toward keeping things fresh and giving players new things to experience.

>

> As for the idea of focusing entirely on open world because this is what they do best and it's what the most players participate in? I strongly disagree. I think it misses the point that, while most players participate in open world, they also tend to do other things be it raids/fractals/dungeons, PvP, or WvW. Take that away and the game feels even more like a pointless open world gold farm, especially with no expansion on the horizon! This would be a disaster.

 

Oh i wasnt suggesting it should be nothing but open world - i agree it would get stale, personally i like story driven content but know that is incredibly hard to make repeatable content. I just think open world here is much better than WOW (my only other real and relevant experience). And i think significant resources should always go to open world.

 

Im curious whether people still feel the horizontal progression is a good thing btw? (ie you can get exotics using a boost instantly, and exotic to ascended is minor improvements)

 

When i first signed up to GW2 i loved the idea, now that i have hit 80, and got exotics (all within about 20 hours gameplay) i have hit a 'what shall i aim towards now' wall a bit...

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

OP may have taken the studio's statement of "...focusing on Guild Wars 2..." and interpreted "...focusing on Guild Wars 2 open world...", somehow. Otherwise, I'm not sure where the idea came from that the Devs were only, and only going to, focus on open world.

 

Edit: Or maybe it came from the tiny sample response from the poll...I don't know.

[thehipone.6812]

As a business, they should obviously go where the customers actually are and focus development efforts there. Allocation of development efforts should not be driven by a vocal forum community if the wishes of said community do not line up with the play stats that are visible only to developers/business folks. They almost certainly know the spending patterns of the different player types, and can pinpoint which types of players actually drive revenue. We have none of this information, but it is probably safe to assume that development resources will be directed to areas of broad, revenue-generating player interest, whether that is open world, raids, or whatever else. It can suck if what you want gets crowded out or ignored, but that's life, especially after a recent re-organization.

[Trise.2865]

> @"SexyMofo.8923" said:

> > @"mercury ranique.2170" said:

> > Arenanet has always put focus on many kinds of content

>

> When you put the majority of the staff on side projects, I wouldn’t consider that as always focus on content.

>

>

 

Oh? You know what those projects were? and that they didn't contain content?

[Healix.5819]

> @"The Ace.9105" said:

> Personally I think that focusing on open world content cause it's the most played content in the game is just statistic value of players who have nothing better to do in the game. They have done their daily fractals and weekly raids and when they want to play the game more the only thing that's left is open world farming that Anet recently nerfed cause it impacts the gemstore.

 

As a general rule, if the content requires you to go out of your way to play it, such as having to LFG to find other people, the majority aren't going to play it. The open world is the vast majority of players because people simply login and do their own thing. Using statistics from other MMOs, over 60% never play dungeons, while less than 5% will finish a raid. For comparison, after WoW added LFD/LFR, allowing people to simply queue up and play, plus easy mode raids, they began to see the majority playing that content.

[trev.1045]

> @"Healix.5819" said:

> > @"The Ace.9105" said:

> > Personally I think that focusing on open world content cause it's the most played content in the game is just statistic value of players who have nothing better to do in the game. They have done their daily fractals and weekly raids and when they want to play the game more the only thing that's left is open world farming that Anet recently nerfed cause it impacts the gemstore.

>

> As a general rule, if the content requires you to go out of your way to play it, such as having to LFG to find other people, the majority aren't going to play it. The open world is the vast majority of players because people simply login and do their own thing. Using statistics from other MMOs, over 60% never play dungeons, while less than 5% will finish a raid. For comparison, after WoW added LFD/LFR, allowing people to simply queue up and play, plus easy mode raids, they began to see the majority playing that content.

 

Thats why they added LFD/LFR in my opinion, it must have been hard to justify putting so much resources into instanced content that so few used. An easy queuing system helps a huge amount. Ironically 'hardcore' wow players were constantly making 'get rid of LFR' threads when i was active on wow.

 

What i like about the events is i can login, and just...join in and help, noone telling me i have the wrong build etc and no stress if i need to log off for some reason.

[kharmin.7683]

> @"Mea.5491" said:

> As an open world player, after the unnecessarily OVERnerfed Istan map....

Unnecessarily? Maybe by your preference and many others; however, I don't believe ANet would nerf something if they considered the nerf to be unnecessary. But that's a topic for a different thread.

 

[MoriMoriMori.5349]

> @"kharmin.7683" said:

> > @"Mea.5491" said:

> > As an open world player, after the unnecessarily OVERnerfed Istan map....

> Unnecessarily? Maybe by your preference and many others; however, I don't believe ANet would nerf something if they considered the nerf to be unnecessary. But that's a topic for a different thread.

 

It only feels "over-nerfed" because people get used to extremely easy gold earning, and started take it for granted. There is zero need for such high gold income in this game when you need about 20-30gold per full set of exotic gear allowing you to access 90-95% of game's content, and get a lot of other things from daily login rewards, story episodes and just simply playing the game, on any map. Certain player's urge to get every Legendary in the game asap, or buy everything from gemshop with ingame currency, doesn't justify anything. I think the biggest mistake of Anet was allowing such income to be seen by players in the first place, if they wouldn't, everybody would be happily playing the game, on any map they wish, without any unnecessary drama. They should never make such mistake again.

[zityz.6089]

As long as the open world has new HoT-like metas or more open world bosses then yes please, or just more things to do in them.

[AlexxxDelta.1806]

It makes absolute sense because that's what the majority of the playerbase is playing in MMOs. It's just an educated guess but I believe the percentage in GW2 is even bigger than average since it's one of the most casual-friendly MMOs out there. Although I can't find a source for that statement by Anet, did I miss something?

[Mea.5491]

> @"kharmin.7683" said:

> > @"Mea.5491" said:

> > As an open world player, after the unnecessarily OVERnerfed Istan map....

> Unnecessarily? Maybe by your preference and many others; however, I don't believe ANet would nerf something if they considered the nerf to be unnecessary. But that's a topic for a different thread.

 

Yes, unnecessarily. The first nerf was deserved, it put Istan on par with SW. That was fair. But the Amala champ nerf was too much.

[Cragga the Eighty Third.60]

> @"The Ace.9105" said:

> What are your thoughts on Anet putting their full focus on open world and stopping developing raids etc. for open world events cause open world is the most played content?

>

> You think they are on the right track or if they are disconnected from the community and looking only statistics?

 

Recent stuff:

For WvW, the Warclaw and various tweaks and things. (Just because you say you don't want it, doesn't make it nothing.)

For PvP an official announcement about changing titles, and request for player input.

Class rebalancing which doesn't much affect open world and is therefore specifically for WvW, PvP, Raids or whatever.

A new fractal.

 

So I'm not sure why you are impying that Gw2 is dropping everything but open world.

[robertthebard.8150]

The perception is skewed, and it's skewed by a particular player's "bubble". They participate in this content, and a "vast majority" of the players in that bubble do too, and so, that's the most active part of the game, from that player's perspective. This applies across the board, and really, across the industry. But we, as players, don't have direct access to the actual numbers, the statistics, of what's really going on.

 

I don't want to wait for a group to fill to play when it's time to play, I want to play. If I have to wait, it's not going on my list of things to do, at least not as a priority.

 

I don't want to spend x amount of time listening to another player complain about whatever, be that gear, skill or xx of another player while I'm trying to do content, and I don't care if they're talking about me or not. If there's enough of that going on, I'm out, regardless of who the subject of the harassment is. I seriously have better things to do, and in a lot of cases, can do them elsewhere, on my own.

 

From reading the forums, and based on my own experience with the "end game crowd" across multiple MMOs, the average player is driven out of that content, and then we get to hear all about how x content is being treated like a red headed step child because of "statistics". Statistics based on actual numbers of players that are doing x content. For myself, I haven't set foot in WvW, based entirely on my experiences with other games. Reading the forums doesn't do a lot to quell my suspicions about the nature of the core player base. The same is true with fractals and raids. These core players want more content, but they don't want more players, unless they conform to exactly what they think those players should be doing.

 

Thusly, when a developer, anywhere, looks at the actual metrics, not statistics posted by players, but the actual backend numbers, the content with the most players gets the most focus. Like the speculation of "no expansion on the horizon", which is likely used as an excuse to justify "well, you could spend some time on my preferred style of play since you're not working on an expansion", even though we have no idea if they are or not. Speculation on my part, but based on actual experience with other games where hyperbole is the best weapon to combat "what do you mean the lack of players in x content is our fault".

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

> @"SexyMofo.8923" said:

> > @"mercury ranique.2170" said:

> > Arenanet has always put focus on many kinds of content

>

> When you put the majority of the staff on side projects, I wouldn’t consider that as always focus on content.

>

>

 

(a) they didn't put the _majority_ of staff on other projects. Total staff was upwards of 400 people and 143 were laid off.

(b) these weren't "side" projects; they just weren't GW2

© even if the above weren't true, we have little idea how people were actually allocated, whether considering 2019, or 2011.

 

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

> @"The Ace.9105" said:

> What are your thoughts on Anet putting their full focus on open world and stopping developing raids etc. for open world events cause open world is the most played content?

>

> You think they are on the right track or if they are disconnected from the community and looking only statistics?

>

> Personally I think that focusing on open world content cause it's the most played content in the game is just statistic value of players who have nothing better to do in the game. They have done their daily fractals and weekly raids and when they want to play the game more the only thing that's left is open world farming that Anet recently nerfed cause it impacts the gemstore.

>

> Unless the focusing on open world content brings us some kind of separate 10-man instances where you clear the map and get completion from it like vanquish in gw1 the full on focus is just disconnection from the community.

 

Focusing all on the area that most people play most of the time would be "disconnecting from the community and looking only at statistics."

 

****

I don't think that any of us have any clear idea what drives profits or costs for the game, what would please most of us the most, or inspire important fractions of us enough. I think it's worth stating our preferences, it's worth letting ANet know when we like (or do not like) features or stories.

 

By far the biggest mistake ANet could make would be paying too much attention to our second guessing. They've been successful making games for over 10 years; I think we need to trust that they know their business. (And if they don't, there's absolutely nothing any of us could say or do that would turn things around for them.)